Justice Officials in 'Panic Mode' as Hearing Nears on Failed Anti-Gun Trafficking Program

By William La Jeunesse

Published June 09, 2011

| FoxNews.com

Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C.

The operation was supposed to stem the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico by allowing so-called straw buyers to purchase guns legally in the U.S. and later sell them in Mexico, usually to drug cartels.

Instead, ATF documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms knowingly and deliberately flooded Mexico with assault rifles. Their intent was to expose the entire smuggling organization, from top to bottom, but the operation spun out of control and supervisors refused pleas from field agents to stop it.

Only after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry died did ATF Agent John Dodson blow the whistle and expose the scandal.

"What people don't understand is how long we will be dealing with this," Dodson told Fox News back in March. "Those guns are gone. You can't just give the order and get them back. There is no telling how many crimes will be committed before we retrieve them."

But now the casualties are coming in.

Mexican officials estimate 150 of their people have been shot by Fast and Furious guns. Police have recovered roughly 700 guns at crime scenes, 250 in the U.S. and the rest in Mexico, including five AK-47s found at a cartel warehouse in Juarez last month.

A high-powered sniper rifle was used to shoot down a Mexican military helicopter. Two other Romanian-made AK-47s were found in a shoot-out that left 11 dead in the state of Jalisco three weeks ago.

The guns were traced to the Lone Wolf Gun Store in Glendale, Ariz., and were sold only after the store employees were told to do so by the ATF.

It is illegal to buy a gun for anyone but yourself. However, ATF's own documents show it allowed just 15 men to buy 1,725 guns, and 1,318 of those were after the purchasers officially became targets of investigation.

Arizona gun store owners say they were explicitly told by the ATF to sell the guns, sometimes 20, 30, even up to 40 in a single day to single person.

And those orders, from at least one ATF case agent, are on audio recording.

"We would say, 'Do you (the ATF) want us to stop selling, is there something we should do here?'" Brad DeSayes, owner of J&G Gun Sales in Prescott, said. "And they would say, 'No, no, no, keep selling - just tell us after the fact.'"

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, holds a hearing Wednesday into Operation Fast and Furious.

The hearing is billed as "Reckless Decisions, Tragic Outcomes," and the following are among the details expected in testimony:

- The ATF allowed and encouraged five Arizona gun store owners to sell some 1,800 weapons to buyers known to them as gun smugglers.

- It installed cameras inside the gun stores to record purchases made by those smugglers.

- It obtained surveillance video from parking lots and helicopters showing straw buyers transferring their guns from one car to another.

- It learned guns sold in Phoenix were recovered only when Mexico police requested "trace data," which is obtained from their serial number.

The first witness in Wednesday's hearing is Sen. Charles Grassley, who will describe what his investigative team learned from four months of interviews and thousands of documents. He will be followed by three members of Brian Terry's family, three ATF agents and Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, who only months ago insisted the agency did not let guns go south to Mexico, a claim contradicted by field agents in Group 7, the actual agents who ran the operation in Phoenix.

By the time the mainstream media and left-wing blogs are done with this story...it will be the fault of every American gun owner and the NRA that those evil gun stores were there for the criminals to approach in the first place. You see...if WE had not encouraged the shop owners to be in the business of selling evil guns to the public....this tragedy would never have occurred. IT'S YOUR FAULT. Anyone who expects Eric Holder to take a fall over this hasn't been paying attention, and if you believe he is responsible....prepare to be attacked for being a right-wing racist.

HM,
You hit the nail on the head. If you control the media you control the voter. Remember the Lewinski/Clinton affair? Amazingly the media gave little or no coverage to the real story of the day the China/Clinton affair. One of MANY examples!!!!!!!

Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa.(AuctionArms.com) -- Last week, 31 U.S. House Democrats wrote to President Barack Obama, urging him to end Administration stonewalling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Project Gunrunner," and the "Fast and Furious" program under which border state dealers were encouraged to sell thousands of guns to suspicious buyers.

According to the NRA-ILA, in the letter, spearheaded by Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., the lawmakers called the investigative tactics "extremely troubling" and found the Justice Department's failure to provide information to congressional investigators "equally troubling."

Saying that Americans deserve "prompt and complete answers," the letter concluded with a call for the administration to help "get to the bottom of this serious allegation of federal law enforcement misconduct."

To read the letter, click here—and if your representative signed it, please be sure to thank him for taking this stand for strong congressional oversight of this disastrous program.

The Mexican government cares less about their citizens, then this country's government!

Be on the look out for the Mexican government to broker a deal with Obama to give the "free ticket" to the illegals for the US government putting guns in the hands of criminals in Mexico and their killing of their innocent citizens !!

A law enforcement officer died by one of these guns. The administration has blood on its hands and will in the future. Yes, people need to go to jail and be impeached over this as it was nothing but a political ploy to put guns in the hands of bad guys to say that they were gotten in the US to push the gun control agenda. (That's what we call a run on sentence)

Blanking communist mother and father rapers. Yes, father rapers as they are attempting to screw our founding fathers. I have to go take some blood pressure medicine now.

The govt will do a end run some where else. They dont give a damn what we think or want. We must get rid of them any way we have to.
A SWAT team leader spoke on TV about KILLING an unarmed man in his under wear in his house in front of his wife and new kids. They broke into his house practicing for drug dealers knowing it was not the right house,the man had 61 bullets in his body. His wife at the first interview stated he had no gun, they shot him. The team leader first he had a hand gun, then it was a assault rifle,he was in his underwear on the floor playing with his kids.
QUOTE the COP about killing him,HE WASNT THE FIRST AND HE WONT BE THE LAST, what will you do when they break down your door?

(a) In General- The Attorney General, in cooperation with the Secretary of State, shall--

(1) assign agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the United States mission in Mexico, to work with Mexican law enforcement agencies in conducting investigations relating to firearms trafficking and other criminal enterprises;

(2) provide the equipment and technological resources necessary to support investigations and to trace firearms recovered in Mexico; and

(3) support the training of Mexican law enforcement officers in serial number restoration techniques, canine explosive detection, and antitrafficking tactics.

(b) Authorization of Appropriations- There are authorized to be appropriated $9,500,000 for each of fiscal years 2010 and 2011 to carry out this section.

The ATF's acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney's Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department.

In a letter to Holder released yesterday, Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley accused the Justice Department of blocking their investigation into the burgeoning scandal (which has resulted in the deaths of at least two American agents and countless Mexican civilians), muzzling the ATF and involving other federal agencies, including the FBI and the DEA, in funding the crackpot scheme.

This goes to the top. I hope they gat Holder and that he pays the highest price possible. He is a disgrace and only someone like Obama would tolerate him. In fact, it is because Holder is such an anti-American radical that he is in that position.